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Ironside Uncovers TM1 SSL Certificate Expiration Issue

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Ironside recently reported a new issue to IBM that is now confirmed as having an impact on all TM1 sites regardless of version. The Ironside Managed Services team uncovered the issue while troubleshooting a client’s environment.

“In our efforts to secure an environment for one of our larger insurance clients, it was noticed that the SSL certificate was going to expire shortly,” said Erik Romanek, Ironside’s Director of Platform and Managed Services. “John Commons, one of Ironside’s platform consultants, worked with IBM to come up with a few solution options. This is just another example of Ironside going the extra mile to make sure the implementations we work on are configured securely and for longevity.” Read more

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Ironside and Tableau Partner to Power Data Discovery

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If modern business data is a river, then traditional enterprise business intelligence is a bucket. Sure, you can pull some valuable and reliable insights at regular intervals that will help you take the pulse of what’s going on day to day, but there’s a much larger percentage of valuable insight that’s just going to wash by. That’s why having a complementary data discovery strategy is so important: it helps you be where you need to be in that flood to catch what’s most relevant to your current business concerns. One of the ways Ironside is helping our clients get to this level of self-service flexibility is by becoming a Tableau partner. Read more

Tim Kreytak at IBM Watson Summit in Tokyo

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Ironside CEO Tim Kreytak was featured as part of Japanese news outlet BCN’s June 13, 2016 article recapping the IBM Watson Summit that took place in Tokyo on May 24-26. Tim (shown bottom right in the following photo) was a guest speaker at the conference, where he talked about Ironside’s successes as an IBM partner, specifically discussing our predictive policing work with the Manchester, NH Police Department.

 

Tim Kreytak in BCN News

“Tim Kreytak, CEO of Ironside, introduced their success with Manchester Police Department in reducing the number of crimes by 26% in one year,” the article stated (translated from Japanese). It then went on to talk about Ironside’s partnership with IBM and the measures by which we judge our clients’ success, as well as some additional case examples around Watson Analytics.

 

IBM Watson Summit in Tokyo

 

IBM Watson Summit in Tokyo

Solution Shared at IBM Watson Summit in Tokyo

Ironside’s IronShield predictive policing platform gives police departments the tools and knowledge they need to anticipate criminal behavior and proactively prevent crime, which is one of the largest factors in crime reduction. It utilizes powerful predictive models tailored for each community’s unique geography, weather, and history right from the start through its core module for hot spot policing, producing intuitive visual map displays of where crime is most likely to occur.

If you’d like to check out the solution featured at the conference, take a look at our IronShield page.  Or you can read about it in local news coverage at WMUR9.

You can see the article about the IBM Watson Summit in Tokyo on BCN Bizline.

 

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Ironside and Domo Partner for Flexible Self-Service Analytics

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Ironside’s partners help us empower our clients and deliver value from data and analytics using the best technology for their particular business needs, which is why we’re excited to announce that we’ve added Domo to that list. Domo’s flexible, collaborative, and intuitive platform represents a strong approach to modern self-service analytics, and being a Domo partner lets us bring our clients actionable insights from diverse data sources even in low-IT environments. Read more

Meet Scott Misage, Business Intelligence Practice Lead

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Ironside is happy to announce that one of our long-time professional services veterans, Scott Misage, will be taking on a broader management role as our Business Intelligence Practice Lead. With his history as a crucial contributor to and point person on many diverse and complex analytics projects across a variety of industries during his time as an Engagement Manager, Scott was a natural choice to head up the Ironside Business Intelligence practice and keep us at the forefront of innovation in the space.

About Scott

Scott Misage Business Intelligence Practice LeadScott is one of those rare leaders who is fully immersed in every possible detail of Ironside’s business analytics offerings but who can also deliver on the big picture and see the overall goals and strategies behind those individual solutions. This is why Scott has made a name for himself as a top thinker around both the performance of our solutions and their integration with one another.

Scott’s Specialties: Business Intelligence Advisory and Implementation, Performance Management Strategy, Enterprise Data Management and Architecture, Data Discovery, Bimodal Analytics, New Technology Discovery/Evaluation, Analytics Adoption

 

Focus and Goals

In his new role as Business Intelligence Practice Lead, Scott is committed to expanding our clients’ understanding of what a business analytics solution can do for them.

“It’s way more than just your standard BI reporting,” he says. “With all the advancements that have occurred, both in terms of the expanding focus on data discovery and the integration of predictive capabilities, business analytics is becoming this central connective fabric that really unifies and communicates across your whole environment. Through data, it unlocks the past, present, and future of your organization.”

This evolution is something Ironside already has a jump on due to Scott’s leadership in embracing and pushing forward a philosophy of bimodal analytics. Building on both our foundation in traditional enterprise BI structures and innovations in the areas of visualization, dashboarding, and data discovery, Scott is helping us provide the ad hoc capabilities that are in such high demand currently without compromising on the governance standards that allow analytics systems to function effectively.

“The whole bimodal analytics idea really hinges on balance,” he states. “It’s about getting a conversation going between your formal mode 1 BI infrastructure with all those recurring enterprise reports and your moving-at-the-speed-of-business mode 2 data discovery tools that uncover new insights. The key is to make sure there’s a process in place for this and that data quality gets kept as the main priority.”

Scott is also involved in building a deeper connection between the Business Intelligence and Analytics Advisory practice areas. Because there are so many tools out there on the market, having the ability to smoothly transition between evaluating options and building strategies and executing the technical elements needed to make those recommendations real is critical.

“We’re spoiled for choice in terms of business analytics tools, so it can get tricky to find the exact right fit,” he asserts. “Our practices together have the unique ability to both evaluate the tools from a technical and business perspective and then see the results of those evaluations through to completion, enabling the client along the way and delivering highly valuable solutions.”

If you’d like to see more of Scott’s perspectives as both a consultant and Business Intelligence Practice Lead, check out the articles he’s written on our website. You can also visit our Business Intelligence page to see what Scott’s team is involved in and how they can help you discover and build your ideal business analytics solution.

Geoff Speare Named Information Management Practice Lead

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Ironside has placed the reins of our information management and data integration practice into the hands of one of our strongest data handling experts: Geoff Speare. Geoff will now be serving in a broader strategic and management capacity as our Practice Lead for Information Management. His deep expertise across both traditional and big data-oriented infrastructures, passion for bimodal analytics, and focus on governance make him the ideal thought leader to drive this part of our organization.

About Geoff

Geoff Speare PortraitA long-time Ironside veteran, Geoff is an information management mastermind who can transform collections of data into solutions and architectures that keep businesses growing. The powerful integrations and data management strategies he creates show our clients that efficiently organized data is an invaluable asset improving all aspects of a business. Geoff works with tools from SSIS to PureData Systems for Analytics in order to provide the right answers for each client.

Geoff’s Specialties: Enterprise Data Architecture and Integration, Data Warehousing, Data Integration, Bimodal Analytics

Focus and Goals

Information Management Practice Lead is an apt title for Geoff, as many of the initiatives and solutions he’ll take on in his new role bring together elements from Ironside’s other practice areas.

“Information management is critical to all of the solutions that Ironside provides,” he says. “I’m really looking forward to helping businesses understand and solve the challenges they face in organizing and providing the right data to the right people. We’ve been doing this work for a long time at Ironside and have a lot of experience we can bring to bear.”

The infrastructure foundations that the Ironside Information Management team will build under Geoff’s leadership will provide the solid platform upon which organizations build their analytics strategies, meaning that their approaches need to be flexible enough to account for the many data handling options emerging in the modern landscape. Geoff is excited to take on all these different methods and make them a reality for our clients.

“Much more data is moving to the cloud now, which creates new challenges in putting it in one place for analysis,” he asserts. “Add to that the increased demands for timeliness and flexibility created by data discovery tools and the need for dynamic solutions is greater than it’s ever been. Businesses are shifting from warehouse-only architectures to approaches that can meet the requirements of bimodal analytics.”

This atmosphere of change opens up a wide array of opportunities to innovate in the information management and data integration space. Geoff sees this as a chance to get more people exposed to the behind-the-scenes processes they previously haven’t thought about and help them effectively control their environments.

“A lot of data movement is invisible to users – except when it doesn’t work,” he states. “Creating solutions that are easy to maintain and to understand is something I’ve done a lot of and believe very strongly in. I’ve seen many times the benefits of keeping all of these perspectives in mind, and look forward to bringing that approach to even more of Ironside’s clients.”

If you’d like to see more on how Geoff views information management, data integration, and business analytics, check out some of the articles he’s written. You can also check out our Information Management team page to see how Geoff and his team can help you take advantage of the information that’s critical to your organization’s success.

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Ironside Predictive Policing Makes IBM Award Finals

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For the second year in a row, Ironside has been named one of IBM’s Beacon Award finalists, this time in the category of Outstanding IBM Analytics Line-of-Business Solution. This recognition comes in honor of the compelling results that our IronShield predictive policing platform has generated.

About IronShield

IronShield Ironside predictive policing logo

IronShield provides turnkey predictive hot spots policing and analytics for law enforcement. It enables data-driven, evidence-based policing that stops crime before it happens and is customizable to the environment in which it’s implemented, going beyond its initial hot spots module to target each community’s needs. Our CEO Tim Kreytak recently highlighted the impact IronShield has had in Manchester, NH helping the city’s police department combat the heroin crisis. Read more

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Introducing Matt Barter, Industry Lead, Crime Prediction & Prevention

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Officer Matt Barter

Ironside is excited to welcome Matt Barter into our ranks as our Industry Lead for Crime Prediction & Prevention. As a currently active police officer in an urban New England city, Matt is perfectly positioned to understand the unique challenges law enforcement officials at any level face and uncover the solutions that will let them proactively reduce crime in their communities. Read more

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Why Your Dashboard Sucks: Design Thinking at Gartner BI

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This year at the Gartner BI & Analytics Summit in Grapevine, Texas, Ironside’s own Greg Bonnette delivered a presentation that got his audience questioning just what it is that makes a good dashboard. During his talk, Why Your Dashboard Sucks, Greg used the all-too-familiar staple of BI development as a gateway into a much wider discussion of design thinking and its applications in a business analytics setting. Read more

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Ironside Talks Fighting the Heroin Crisis in Manchester, NH

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On Tuesday, February 16th, Ironside’s CEO Tim Kreytak spoke to a packed house at the IBM PartnerWorld Leadership Conference in Orlando, FL about the work we’ve done with the Manchester, NH Police Department to help combat the growing heroin crisis in their community not with guns, but with predictive analytics. Following an opening statement by IBM CEO Ginni Rometty, Tim wasted no time in driving home the positive impact our IronShield platform has had. Read more